


needles and pricks

by nonbinarynino



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Crushes, Drabble, F/M, Hormones, Internalized Transphobia, Needles, Trans Character, Trans Female Pidge | Katie Holt, kind of? but i'll tag it just in case, not the sexy kind
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-20
Updated: 2019-01-20
Packaged: 2019-10-13 01:51:53
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,401
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17478983
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nonbinarynino/pseuds/nonbinarynino
Summary: Pidge is so lost in thought that the knock on the door nearly makes her fall off of the sink.





	needles and pricks

**Author's Note:**

> these were two separate unfinished drabbles that have been in my notes for months so i merged 'em and posted 'em
> 
> tw: briefly mentioned past transphobia, needles (somewhat graphic use of said needles)
> 
> im trans and i like to think that pidge is, too

Pidge doesn’t actually really remember that name that she’d been given at birth. Not Katie, of course, because that’s the name that she’d chosen for herself, age five and pointing chubby fingers at a television character. Pidge is a nickname that she adores and holds closely to her heart, but Katie is her _name,_ and she will never let go of it.

No, she’s talking about the name that she had condemned the moment that she had first started to talk. Not that she remembers that much, but Matt tells her that she used to say _that’s not me, that’s not me_ whenever someone had tried to call her over. “It’s not like I knew, because I was eight and didn’t know anything, but it wasn’t exactly a surprise, either,” he had said one day, absentmindedly as she fiddled with the white-pink-and-blue bracelet that he had given her. He’s always been a good brother, especially when it comes to stuff like that. He’s taken pictures of her posing with the slurs that had been etched into her locker, has corrected people on their pronouns for her when she was far too shy to say anything, has made sure that she was comfortable and safe.

Sometimes, when it’s so late that it’s more morning than night, the name comes to her in a hot flash, the syllables blending into something ugly. She doesn’t regret anything about transitioning, doesn’t regret the blockers or the name change or the therapy, but sometimes she feels as though _he_ was somebody else entirely, somebody that she left for dead. That makes no sense, not really, because it’s not like she and _him_ are different people, but there are days where the thought just won’t leave her head. The name always alludes her in the morning though. Her mom had done too good of a job of throwing all of the evidence of _him_ away, which Pidge will always be eternally grateful for.

Her family has supported her and loved her in a way that she knows that not everybody has. They’ve had good days and bad days, of course, but she’s always been validated. Always been _safe._

She has that same sense of security now, with the paladins. Coming out had been kind of awkward, but Shiro has known since way before Kerberos. It's not like he would have let anybody badmouth her, and it's not like anybody had ended up _wanting_ to. Coran and Allura had made one confused remark about "oh, is that not common for humans?" and Hunk had shrugged at her bracelet as if it had told him this truth from the get go. Lance, admittedly, had stayed awkwardly silent, to the point where Keith had shoved him, but the next day, all of the books about gender had been gone from the library, and Lance had showed up to breakfast with an exhausted smile.

Pidge is so lost in thought that the knock on the door nearly makes her fall off of the sink. She grabs onto the wall with one hand and fumbles with her needle in the other, trying desperately not to drop it. “Pidge?” a voice calls, and she wrinkles her nose when she recognizes it. Not that she _dislikes_ Lance, because it’s really quite the opposite, but she knows how awkward this conversation will be. Everyone knows that she’s trans, since half of the reason she’d cut the notion of being a boy so fast was because she needed their help with getting her back on hormones, but she doesn’t really _talk_ about it anymore. She thinks that they might forget, sometimes. “Pidge, you’ve been in there for, like, fifteen minutes. Did you die?”

“Nah,” she says, rolling her eyes even though he can't see her. “Come back later.”

She can almost _feel_ him pouting through the door. “But I just need to brush my teeth!” he complains. “And I want to go to bed early tonight. Keith and I are practicing tomorrow morning and I need to kick his ass.”

Pidge stares blankly at the sink that she’s not sitting on top of, debating whether or not she should grant mercy on him. “Fine,” she says. “Door’s unlocked.”

When he comes in, he takes one look at her and immediately jolts back in surprise. “Pidgey, why are you _in_ the sink?”

“I’m not _in_ the sink, I’m _on_ the sink,” she corrects, even though she knows that there isn’t really any difference. “And I’m taking my shot. The floor’s gross, so I’m not gonna sit down there.”

Lance blinks. “Okay,” he says, and she watches with mild interest as he pulls out his bag of toiletries that is way too organized to be similar to anything else that he owns. “Don’t stop on my account.”

Pidge scoffs at that, pulling up her sleep shorts so that she can get at her thigh. The first few times that she'd done this, way back when, she'd injected herself in the hip, but those seemed to hurt more than her thigh. “Like I would do that,” she says, and positions the needle. “Ugh. I’ve _literally_ been shot multiple times. I don’t know why I still hesitate when I do this.” Not that she really remembers much about the times that she _had_ been shot - that one time with the Galra, she’d passed out almost instantly, and had woken up in the pod with a small scar and no memories.

He flinches at the mention of her being shot, and she feels a little bad about bringing it up - he’d been the one to carry her out of there, and the one who had been there to catch her when she’d woken up. He looks like he’s about to say something on the topic, which is why it’s so surprising when he says, “I can do it for you if you want.”

Pidge tilts her head in consideration for a moment, despite her immediate desire to laugh at him and tell him that he has no idea what he’s talking about. It _would_ be nice… she’s always done this by herself, since she’d still been on blockers before she sneaked out to the Garrison. She’d injected her stolen hormones by herself in the dirty bathroom stalls, praying that nobody barged in and that she didn't get any infections. There had been one time that one of the teachers had found the needle and assumed that somebody was doing drugs, but like _hell_ Pidge was going to blow her cover. All of the cadets had been subjected to random drug tests for weeks.

“Have you ever done it before?” she asks instead, and snorts when he shakes his head. “How about I show you how, and then maybe you can do it next time, yeah?” She’s not overly worried - she hadn’t even had a demonstration, just written internet instructions and vague knowledge. She cringes about it now, but she’d done what she’d had to.

He pops his toothbrush into his mouth then, and Pidge almost makes a snarky comment about his self-care routine being the only thing that shuts him up, but she just shakes her head instead. (That would imply that she doesn't _like_ it when Lance talks, and she very much does. She likes his jokes and his stories and his smiles when he tells them, and she likes  _him,_ stupidly and wholeheartedly.) “Okay,” she says. “I usually inject it right here, or on the same spot on the other leg if this one is too bruised. Some people do their butts or hips but those are harder for me since I’ve always just done this myself.”

She doesn’t talk him through the next part, just gives him a clear view as she presses the needle into her thigh, her lip twitching in discomfort at the pain that never quite ebbs away no matter how many times she’s done this. “I used to take a larger dose every two weeks, but I got crabby," she explains, maybe just to kill the silence. "That’s why I was such a jerk during the first two months at the Garrison, heh. Plus, it just hurt more. So now I take lower doses once a week.”

“Cool,” Lance says, even though it’s muffled by his toothpaste. “You’re pretty hardcore, Pidgey, but I’ve always known that.”

“Of course you have,” she agrees. “I’m awesome.”


End file.
